Hi
I live in Southern Ontario in Toronto area. I want to widen my driveway with paver stones. I nees to know how thick should be my 3/4 gravel (which will be underneath paver 2" and 1" bedding sand).
The ground dirt it clay as far as I can tell. But half my the area also has some gravrl mixed with dirt (probably from the construction time, 20 years ago).
PS: the area in front of the camera is where Im replacing the exsisting pavers (has already gravel/limestone installed) which is only be used for pedestrian teaffic.
by Acceptable_Promise68
14 Comments
If you want to park on the extension then it needs to be 12 inch base 1 inch bedding and you need pavers rated for vehicle traffic, often thicker like 80mm but aspectratio is more important. So dig about 15 inches below the top of the paver
I wouldn’t be digging the clay out. Once you hit clay call it there. Important to have undisturbed sub grade so anything you mess with comes out of the hole
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9” Compacted gravel, 1” bedding and depending on dimensions of stone, 80-100mm for vehicle traffic. Larger slabs need to be 100mm due to surface area supporting load.
I would also suggest using a reversible plate compactor to ensure compaction is adequate for vehicles.
Alberta based here
Typically, for a driveway, I do 12″ of ‘road crush’ compacted in 2-3″ lifts if you are using a small tamper or 6″ if it is a larger tamper. Then between ½” to 1″ of ’10mm limestone screening’ for a bedding material.
For a driveway you would typically want a 80mm/4 inch paver. You can use a 2″, but there is a better chance they break over time.
If you want to strengthen the base, or have to go a bit shallower, I’ve had good success mixing dry bags of concrete in with the road crush as I do the lifts. 1 bag for about a 10×10′ area.
Use a good geo grid fabric with the stone base on top
We ain’t Yanks, guys. We’ve got our own fancy measurement system.
Eastern Ontario installer here, I do 12” compacted GA on woven geo textile with grid at 6”. Make sure you over-dig 6” wide to allow for your edging, I recommend 6k psi fibre concrete for edging.
I also recommend using 7mm chips for bedding stone.
getting that dumpster pulled may be a problem. That’s a lot of weight.
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probably an unpopular opinion with some of the veterans , I did stone work about 20 years … If its a new driveway install I think excavating down around 10″ and then installing Granular A / A1 as a base is the way to go ( gravel sand mix ) compacting in layers as you go. top 2″ in screening ( limestone or otherwise) . But if the driveway is already existing and the ground has been driven on for the last 20 years , digging it all out just to reinstall new aggregate doesn’t make sense. The cost and time outweighs any small repairs you might need to do in a few seasons. geo grid and fabrics are a waste of time . Geo grid mesh is for retaining walls not pavers IMO, weeds that grow threw interlocking stone usually come from the sand in between the pavers, not from 10″ down in the ground so the fabric is just a waste and is better served in applications like rock gardens or mulched beds. anyways just my take on it and good luck with the install.
You Canadians use imperial aswell? Thought you guys were metric
This isn’t a code question?
We just did our interlock driveway in southern Ontario. The previous interlock driveway installed by the last owner basically failed as they didn’t dig out enough soil for the base. We live in southern Ontario.
For our new driveway we dug out 12-14 inches of clay and topsoil. From there we did a 12 inch a-gravel base and then 1-2 inches of limestone chips.